This invention relates to the detection of the presence of, and type of, bacteria in body fluids (human and animal), which is an ever-constant problem for the medical profession both for diagnostic and treatment reasons. Unreliability of laboratory tests is not uncommon. Often a time lag is present between collection of the body fluid to be tested and the inoculation of a culture medium therewith. Some microorganisms multiply so rapidly that such a time lag makes the distinction between a significant infection and an overgrowth of contaminants impossible. Other microorganisms are so sensitive to their environment that they may not survive a time lag and a delay in inoculation of culture media will not present a true picture for the diagnostician. Any apparatus and/or procedure that will eliminate or shorten the time lag will greatly help laboratory analysts.
One of the major problems confronting hospitals today is the accurate detection of urinary tract infections. The presence of bacteria in urine is termed bacteriuria. Clean voided urine from normal individuals generally contains microorganisms that are indigenous residents of the urethra. Urine in the bladder is ordinarily sterile. The presence of any bacteria in the bladder or upper urinary tract is considered abnormal. Significant bacteriuria is a term for describing the numbers of bacteria in voided urine that exceed the numbers usually due to contamination from the anterior urethra. Inasmuch as voided urine is an ideal growth medium for microorganisms, it is imperative that an accurate assessment of bacteriuria be made immediately after a specimen is voided. Prior art techniques for bacterial culturing have disadvantages over our invention in that each has one or more of the following drawbacks: difficulty of interpretation or quantitation, difficulty of performance, excessive expense and time consumption, significant delay between collection of the sample and inoculation of the medium.
An advantage of our invention is that with an embodiment of our device a patient may void directly into the collection device, yet the culture medium may be substantially immediately inoculated with that specimen, by the patient, if desired.
Our invention also allows subculturing of bacterial colonies for further biochemical studies. This is difficult with many of the prior art culturing devices.
Our invention avoids the difficulties of interpretation and collection in the test tubes containing agar which have been used.
With regard to the detection of gonorrhea from a urine sample, it has been necessary in the past to centrifuge the sample to precipitate the heavier bacterial material from the liquid, including the Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, if present, for inoculating a culture medium. An advantage of our invention is that we are able to culture a urine sample for detection of N. gonorrhoeae without having to centrifuge the urine sample.